What is “Pocket Plum” / “Bent Banana Disease”?

There’s a fungal disease that infects damsons that’s known by various names, including:

“bent banana disease”

“plum pocket”

“bladder plums”

Its Latin name is Taphrina pruni (“taphre” is Greek for trench or ditch).

This disease is fatal to damson fruits and so can seriously reduce your damson yield. It can be summed up in two words: grotesque deformity.

In ten years of growing damsons I’ve come across the occasional pocket plum-blighted damson. But this year, 2014, has been the worst ever.

In my patch on the Herefordshire-Shropshire border, every damson tree in my orchard and in the hedges in my meadow was infected to some extent. I estimate I’ve lost maybe as much as a fifth of my crop. That’s a lot of damsons to lose.

Where to Learn More About Pocket Plum

The web is a rich source of information on this disease. So, if you’d like to learn about the epidemiology, aetiology, symptoms and treatment of pocket plum you could always check out these sites: